When I first started Free Lunch, I drove around downtown for a few months just trying to find the right place to go. During that time, I was thinking through all of the logistical problems I would have to solve like: How am I going to tell people about it? What kind of lunch am I going to make? How much should I budget? How will volunteers find out about it and sign up? Where will I hand out lunches? How will I hand out lunches? Who will I serve? Who else should I think about serving? Questions like that.
Recently a new question has surfaced, How effective are the methods used in accomplishing the purpose? If the purpose of Free Lunch is to form communities with invisible people, and inform people that pathways to these invisible people exist, then how do I measure success?
Jim Collins is the man. He wrote a book called Good to Great, a book that profiles businesses that went from good businesses to great businesses. He first defined good and great businesses, and made a few observations about why some companies make the leap. He also wrote a additional chapter, released in the form of a monograph, about how to apply the great company principles to the social sector. One of the challenging questions that came from that book was, How do you measure output from a social cause? Can I measure community? Can I measure the effectiveness of my efforts? What is the effect? Is the effect in line with my purpose? These questions are more difficult to answer.
Floyd McClung is also the man. I had a chance to hear Floyd speak last night and he shed some light on answering these new questions. He made the point that a person's core values will determine how they interpret input and ultimately dictate how they choose to act. Floyd McClung has done some incredible work in his lifetime. He is unprecedented...sort of. He doesn't have a lot of precedence. Most of us live life similar to how the people around us live life. That isn't a bad thing, we are very lucky to have well developed methods for getting an education, getting a job, living accommodations are plentiful and comfortable. This is one reason why America rocks, we have a great country with lots of good role models that have preceded us, showed us what they did right, and what we can do better.
I don't know Floyd very well, but it seems to me that he had the energy and ideas to carve his own path. AND he has been effective in what he is doing. So when he says that a persons core values influence what they choose to do, I am going to start asking that question. What does Free Lunch value? What do I value? I don't answer that question by what I am saying, but by my track record.
I am going to be honest and tell you that I value having fun, and running a machine. I like how smoothly Free Lunch runs every time. I like the system. I like how everything is timed and it happens on time or just a little bit ahead of schedule. I don't think those are bad things to value and enjoy, but they are secondary.
So I will continue to ask more questions and get better at doing what Free Lunch is all about.
Now, since I do enjoy the systems part of it, I will share with you a few statistics:
First Free Lunch: 16 September, 2006
Number of lunches served to date: 350
Average Cost of Lunch: $3.16
Number of volunteers who have contributed: 23
Approximate number of volunteer hours served: 190
Fastest grocery store run: 12 minutes
Percentage of lunches paid for by donors (unsolicited, they gave out of their own generosity!): 65%
A lunch includes:
- 1 ham or turkey sandwich in a sandwich bag ($1.17)
- 1 chocolate pudding snack pack ($0.27)
- 1 apple ($0.45)
- 1 banana ($0.20)
- 2 granola bars ($0.50)
- 1 spoon ($0.03)
- 1 napkin ($0.01)
- 1 bottle of water ($0.16)
- 1 capri sun (woo! juicy!) ($0.23)
- 1 brown bag ($0.02)
- the man ($0.23)
- 1 smile (priceless)
Isn't it fun to keep track of all the stats? I love that part.
